


Test of Strength

by JusttMee123



Category: Psych (TV 2006)
Genre: But she wasn't always, Juliet is a badass, Police Academy, idk I'm bad at tagging things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:09:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23417245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JusttMee123/pseuds/JusttMee123
Summary: The night before she leaves she lays awake staring at her ceiling, feeling the electricity coursing through her veins. This has been her dream for years, now. She's been working toward this for the better half of a decade. (Or, a young Juliet O’Hara enrolls in the Police Academy).
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Test of Strength

**Author's Note:**

> So this was supposed to be a short one-shot. And then it kind of ran away from me, and I didn't bother trying to reel it back in. Hope you enjoy!

The night before, she lays awake staring at her ceiling. Her mom and Lloyd are just down the hall, sound asleep. Her cat is curled up by her feet. It's nearly midnight, and she's staring at the ceiling, feeling the electricity coursing through her veins.

This has been her dream for years, now. She's been working toward this for the better half of a decade. She kept active all through high school. She went to a college with a fantastic criminal justice program. She studied hard and never got lower than an A-minus in any class, even her electives. She graduated a year early. It's all been leading up to this.

All of her past conversations with Ewan play through her mind. She wonders briefly where he is right now and wishes she could talk to him. He always knew what to say to her. He never discouraged her or taunted her, no matter how ridiculous she sounded. His words from their last conversation ring in her ears.

"You are powerful, little sis. You can do anything once you set your mind to it."

She blows out a sigh and rolls over, staring at the moon through her window. The nerves are there, too. Truth be told she's not totally sure if she's ready to leave home. But the Police Academy is right here in Miami, so it hardly counts. And her dream is more important than her fears. She's going to do this.

* * *

There are twenty recruits in her class. Fourteen men and six women. She's smaller than the rest of them and the youngest by far, just barely 21 years old. It was the last requirement she'd had to meet. But she's earned her place here, just the same as them.

They're led to the dormitories, and she looks around at the women she'll be sharing a room with for the next six months. They all unpack quickly, claiming beds. Hers is by a window, just like her room at home. She suspects the woman on her right was former military, judging by her demeanor and the harsh bun her hair is pulled into. The woman on her left looks to be only a few years older than herself and far friendlier looking.

"Hi, I'm Juliet," she says, reaching a hand out to her. The woman stares at it for a second before reaching out as well and shaking it.

"Penelope Reed," she says, still looking a little surprised. The other women are staring, too, but it prompts them to introduce themselves to each other as well. The woman on her right introduces herself as Katherine Perez. She's surprised to see her smile.

She thinks it's a good sign. They are not competitors. They will be colleagues one day, and she wants to know who has her back.

* * *

The fitness test is first. It's more of a formality than anything else, and they all know it. Still, they need to pass it to go any further with their training at the Academy, otherwise they will be cut from the program. It's fairly easy. She's done more intense workouts preparing to apply to the Academy.

They're yelled at a lot. It's fine. It's something she expected. Sometimes it's chaotic and every so often she sees another recruit flinch. She doesn't. She knows it's just part of the deal. She knows it's to make them the best officer they can be. So she holds her head up and takes it on the chin.

She easily does the 35 sit ups in under a minute, grinning when Recruit Officer Perez extends her hand and helps her up afterward. The push-ups are easy, too, and she thanks Ewan silently for making her do them every day through high school with him. The pull-ups are more of a challenge, but the training officers seem happy that she can do four, so she's happy too. The last parts are the 300-meter sprint and the 1.5-mile run. Once again, she's glad she's been preparing for this for years.

Twenty recruits go into the fitness test, and twenty come out on the other side. They celebrate briefly with high-fives before they're ordered back into formation, being addressed by their last names. Officer Moreno introduces himself to them and informs them that he will be in charge of them and their education at the Academy.

She feels her chest swell with pride. They've passed their first test.

* * *

The first day of classes are easy. Some even repeat the same information she learned in college. When their instructors give her nods of approval, she can't help but smile.

She stays up late at night, determined to be at the top of her class. Sometimes Reed and Perez stay up with her as well. Many of her fellow recruit officers come to her for help studying. She is bright, and she knows it, and she knows the others know it too.

She brags about her grades to her mother and Lloyd. They congratulate her and fawn over her, and she pretends to be embarrassed. They ask her what the Academy is like, and she gives them honest answers. She had thought it would be harder than this.

The words of her high school English teacher come unbidden to mind. 'Hubris is a dangerous thing' he had warned. 'It occurs when a person overestimates their capabilities, and ultimately leads to their downfall.'

She brushes the words off. She knows she's worked hard for this. She's not overestimating anything.

* * *

They're allowed out on weekends, and she hears a lot of the other recruits making plans to go to a local bar. It piques her interest as she listens. She's never really been out. She was always studying in college. She never had time.

So, she jumps at the opportunity. After all, she is 21. She should act like it.

She tags along with the other recruits. The bar is crowded, and people bump into her a lot. A couple of times people stand on her foot. She has to shout to be heard over the noise. She doesn't see what the appeal is. And she's thinking about bowing out early and going back to campus, when Recruit Officer Badillo suggests a drinking game.

It's childish and silly, but she stays and learns a lot about the other recruits. Reed is the only one of them who lived in another country. Evans is adopted. Gomez changed her major three times before landing on criminal justice. Martinez has five younger sisters. Young is, ironically enough, the oldest recruit.

By the time they all arrive back at campus, it's well past midnight. Thankfully there is no curfew on weekends, but they all slink back to their rooms giggling and shushing each other. She feels closer to them than she did before.

* * *

Things change when their education begins incorporating physical training.

They are introduced to their drill instructors two weeks in. The five of them march into their classroom and announce their names, all crisp movements and precision. She watches in fascination as the introductions are completed. And then their classroom erupts into chaos.

The drill instructors surge through the desks, yelling at them. She rises and stands at attention. A drill instructor approaches her and accuses her of being soft, calls her a marshmallow. He shouts at her to drop and begin doing push-ups. She replies with her best " _Yes, sir!"_ and complies. He shouts down at her as she does so, then turns to another recruit and begins shouting questions at him. She doesn't dare stop doing push-ups until a different drill instructor gives her a different command. The chaos continues for the better part of an hour.

Some of the other recruits have military backgrounds. Recruit Officer Perez is one of them, like she suspected. Some of them, like her, do not have that same background. But while they begin to excel, she finds she has some catching up to do.

She's never fought another person before, unless you count wrestling with her brothers. But they were children then, and her brothers often went easy on her because she was smaller and younger and a tattletale. Now she is expected to spar with people nearly twice her size, and there are no shortcuts.

The first spar is just an assessment. They want to see how each recruit does before any official training. It's safe, and they'll be fighting trained officers. She's not scared of getting hurt and is still riding the high of her academic prowess.

And then she does poorly. The training officer has her pinned in less than five seconds, and she goes to base survival instincts. She kicks and scratches, not realizing she's screaming. An arm presses on her face and she bites down without thinking. When the weight increases on her chest, she somehow curls her legs up under the training officer and kicks out. The weight relents, and she scrambles away, breathing heavily.

In the corner, Officer Moreno is scribbling away, and her fellow recruits watch her stand. She's ordered to stand with the other recruits while the next person steps up. Her cheeks burn, but she stands at attention and watches as recruit after recruit does better than she had.

Later, she's reprimanded. Scratching and biting and screaming are not allowed, she's told. The police are constantly being scrutinized. Sometimes they are even filmed. She must maintain some semblance of professionalism.

She hangs her head and apologizes, and wonders how she got accepted to the Academy. She's told to do better.

* * *

She begins sneaking out of the dorms at night when everyone else is asleep. The gym is never locked, so it doesn't really count as breaking in. And they've never been expressly told that they couldn't go in at night. But there's still the thrill of doing something that might be forbidden.

She attacks the punching bags and dummies with a ferocity she didn't know she possessed. She practices punching and kicking, relishing in the growing power behind each one as time goes on. She humiliation she felt being reprimanded drives her, and she leaves each night with sweat stinging her eyes and her knuckles aching.

It becomes harder to wake up so early in the mornings. She has to drag herself out of bed, and only does so with the knowledge that if she doesn't get up, Moreno will come in and drag her out himself.

And even then, she's still trailing behind the rest of her class in physical training. She blames it on her small stature and lack of fighting experience prior to enrolling. She knows she's improving, but everyone else is, too. It makes her look bad. And that makes her angrier.

She's still excelling in the classroom, so while the other recruits study in between classes, she goes back to the gym. She knows the other recruits notice her wet hair and stiff movements when she rejoins them, but they never say a thing.

* * *

The begin firearms training not long after. If she's being honest, it's the thing she's most nervous about. Her parents don't keep guns in the house. She's never even held a gun.

They learn the firearms safety rules first. Treat all firearms as if they are loaded, keep your finger off the trigger until you intend to press it, and never point a firearm at a person unless you are justified.

Then they learn about the parts of a gun, and how to disassemble and reassemble the gun. They learn on props, something she is grateful for. They learn to check the barrel to make sure there are no bullets in it when they take it apart. They learn how to clear jams.

They are lectured about responsible gun use. They are responsible for every round that exits the gun. They are responsible for the split-second decisions they are in the position to make. Their actions could cost an innocent person their life or cost them their own lives.

It all seems like common sense. She hangs on to every word.

Then they tell them that they will be handling a real firearm. The second they strap a bulletproof vest on her is the moment it all becomes real to her. Her heart takes off, and her hands shake so much she worries they won't hand her a gun. She presses them to the sides of her legs, trying to get them under control.

Officer Moreno notices. He hands her the gun anyway.

"It's a reasonable reaction," he says quietly. If the recruits on either side of her hear, they don't react. "It is a tremendous responsibility."

They take turns firing at paper targets with a silhouette of a human figure. She watches first, her hands still shaking. Some of the others seem totally cool and collected handling a firearm. She wonders if she's the only person who hasn't fired a gun before.

Her name is called, and she steps up. A new paper target is hung, and the training officer hurries out of the way. Her hands shake more as she unholsters the pistol and raises it in front of her, careful to keep her finger alongside the barrel of the gun and off the trigger. She adjusts her hands on the gun, shifting her weight as she tries to find a stance that feels grounded enough for her. A bead of sweat runs down her spine as she lines up the sights with the target. Vaguely, she hears her training officer tell her to fire three shots and then holster her weapon. Her hands are still shaking. She blows out a breath, curls her finger onto the trigger, and pulls.

The recoil nearly causes her to drop the gun, but she tightens her grip and fires two more times. She holsters the gun faster than she thought she could and quickly backs away. Her first shot had gone wild, the second had hit the white part of the target, but the third had created a hole right through the center of the silhouette.

It was dumb luck, and she knows they all know it. But it shocks her that she could have taken someone's life just then.

Her hands don't stop shaking for hours.

* * *

"You're undisciplined."

The voice startles her, and the punching bag nearly hits her in the face as it swings back. She manages to catch it and peers around it. Recruit Officer Perez is standing in the doorway of the gym.

"Excuse me?" she says, breathless.

"You need to practice restraint," the other woman says, stepping forward. "You're trying too hard to prove something. You're all aggressiveness and rage, but those take away from precision." Perez approaches a dummy, the same one she herself had been attacking minutes before. It had taken most of her strength to topple it, and she had a feeling Perez knew.

"So how would you do it, then?" she asks, feeling her annoyance building. Perez cocks her head at her. Then she watches as Perez reaches up and wraps her arm around the dummy's neck and spins, dragging the dummy down as she does. It hits the floor with a thud, and Perez kicks it away.

"You can't spend all of your energy on one task," she says lowly. "Especially on a dummy. They don't fight back or resist arrest." Perez turns her back to her and places her hands behind her head. "Arrest me."

Juliet approaches warily. They haven't done this in their training yet, but she can take an educated guess at what she's supposed to do. She grabs one of Perez's wrists and twists it behind her back, then reaches for the other wrist.

It happens in less than a second. She feels Perez twist her wrist out of her grip and kick her leg out from under her. She falls hard, landing on her hip, but pops back up ready to strike. Instead Perez drives her shoulder into her stomach. She falls again. It takes her a second to stumble to her feet. She backs up as Perez approaches, but trips over the toppled dummy and falls backward. Perez offers her a hand up.

"Alright, you don't give up, I'll give you that," she says.

"You threw me around like a rag doll," Juliet says, cheeks burning. She can feel the tears welling up in her eyes and threatening to spill over, but she holds them back, determined not to cry in front of a fellow recruit.

"Look, I didn't come here to embarrass you," Perez says, coming to stand next to her. "I want to help you."

"What's the point?" She sits on the ground, resting her elbows on her knees. "I'm not going to graduate. They're never going to let me be a police officer."

"Yes, they will," Perez says. "Get up."

"Why?"

"Like I said, I'm going to help you."

"Fine." She rolls her eyes but stands.

"Put your hands on your head," Perez says as she circles behind her. She does. "Now the fact that you're a woman is an advantage, especially over men. Resist arrest."

She feels Perez pretend to handcuff her, so she begins to pull away. She gets one arm free before Perez grabs it, turns her own body away, and pulls her backwards. She topples to the ground once more, and then Perez has a knee on her back and both of her arms twisted behind her back. She holds Juliet there for a moment, then helps pull her up.

"You have a lower center of gravity, so use it," she explains without Juliet needing to ask. "Drop into your hips and use your body weight to pull them past the tipping point. Once the chest goes through, the rest will follow. Want to try it?"

She turns her back on Juliet and places her hands on her head again. She doesn't particularly want to do this, but she steps up anyway. Her muscles are tense, anticipating Perez's move. She barely has a hand around her wrist when she feels the other woman pull away.

Immediately her own hand clamps down on the wrist she's holding. She manages to turn slightly away and pull Perez back as she bends her knees and plants her feet. A second later Perez falls, rolling back up to her feet a second later. She's wearing a huge grin on her face.

"Good," she says. "That was good."

It felt good, too. She stares down at her hands. She hadn't thrown Perez nearly as far as she had thrown her, but she still did it and managed to stay on her feet.

"What else do you have, Perez?" she asks eagerly.

"Kate," she says. "My friends call me Kate."

* * *

Moreno lines them up in front of a table. Their sidearms sit on the table along with a stopwatch. Some of the other recruits grin and rub their hands together, as if they know what's coming next.

They are taught the age-old stress reliever of assembling and reassembling their side arms in as little time as they can. They do it individually, first. She's still not totally familiar with handling a gun, but she manages it in 47 seconds.

The recruits quickly turn it into a competition. Dennett wins by a landslide. She's just happy to not come in last. By the end of the session, she's down to 43 seconds.

* * *

Three months into training, one of the recruits quits. She watches as Gomez packs her things and turns in her equipment. The room is silent when she leaves.

"This is not the first time you will lose one of your colleagues," Officer Moreno tell them later. "People will be transferred, people will be promoted, people will die." He goes on to say that being a police officer was one of the most stressful jobs anyone could have. If they don't think they can handle it, now is the time to realize it.

Her stomach does a weird little flip. She wonders why exactly Gomez left. Then she wonders if she shouldn't follow suit.

* * *

She's still trailing behind the other recruits during firearms training. Her hands have stopped shaking when they hold a gun, and she can hit a target with adequate accuracy. But she still hesitates sometimes. The others don't hesitate. They call her soft and undisciplined. She is terrified they will cut her from the program and she will be forced to leave in disgrace.

It's when they practice firing on someone at close range that she nearly breaks. The training officers go through the motions with them ad nauseum. Strike out with your hand, bring it back to your chest so you don't shoot yourself, unholster the gun, rotate it forward as soon as it's clear of the holster, and fire. Step back from the target and assume their usual shooting stance, and fire again if necessary.

They practice the motions over and over, slowly, with props, and then speed it up. She does fairly well, she thinks. No one shakes their head as they observe her, so she's happy with that. By the time they swap out the props for live firearms, she's feeling pretty confident.

She watches others first. Most of them do well. One or two fumble the gun coming out of the holster that quickly, but they recover nicely. Many of them make it look easy. No one shoots themselves.

When it's her turn, though, she's startled by how close the target is. It's cardboard, this time, and she stands less than two feet from it. And this time, the silhouette has a face and a gun. Officer Moreno walks her through the motions one last time, as he did with everyone else. He instructs her to fire three times. Her heart starts to race again. She's trained for this, she reminds herself.

"And go!"

She immediately punches out with her left hand, hitting the cardboard. It swings backwards and she brings her left hand back to her chest. At the same time, her right hand finds the gun and pulls it from her holster, rotating it toward the target. The target swings forward, looming over her. She pulls the trigger.

She gasps out a breath. Her heart is racing. She can't feel her left hand.

"Two more, Recruit Officer O'Hara!"

She fires twice more. Stepping back is a relief. As is getting to hold the pistol with both hands. She fires three more times, punching holes through the chest of the silhouette.

"And holster."

She does, and steps back to the rest of the recruits. Someone claps her on the back. She doesn't turn to see who it was. Kate is called up next. Her heart slows down as she watches her friend perform flawlessly. She's surprised by the look on Kate's face as she returns to stand next to her.

"That was really intense," Kate whispers breathlessly as she stands at attention. "I've never had to shoot anyone that close before."

Juliet only nods. She doesn't trust herself to speak.

* * *

She spends longer in the gym that night. Most of her time is spent with the punching bag. She pushes herself harder than she has before, until her muscles are burning and she can hardly lift her arms anymore.

The image of the cardboard target flashes through her mind. She remembers it swinging back toward her, and she lashes out at the punching bag again. She wishes the image on the target hadn't been so realistic.

She remembers the recoil of the gun again, unbalanced in only one hand. She's pretty sure it caused her to elbow herself in the ribs. She hadn't even had time to aim. All of the bullets she shot from that close range would have gone through the person's stomach.

She never wants to shoot someone from that close.

* * *

They begin running more drills. Often they are partnered with each other so they learn about communicating with someone else in the field. It's weird at first. They've gotten used to working on their own. Now they have someone else they need to work with. She's not very good at it, initially.

The day they do arrest and control drills, she gets too excited to use the defense techniques Kate taught her. She and Dennett approach the training officer acting as their suspect. They both go high, cracking their heads together.

She sees stars and stumbles sideways, and then something pushes her to the ground. She lunges for the training officer and manages to grab hold of one of his ankles. He trips and kicks out at her, manages to shake his leg free. She manages to get up to her knees and lunges again, wrapping herself around his legs. The training officer falls. Dennett appears above her and presses his knee into the training officer's back, so she puts her full body weight on his legs, keeping him on the ground. Eventually Dennett gets the cuffs on, and she rolls off of him. Officer Moreno approaches them.

"Alright," he says. "Tell me what happened."

"I lost my shoe," she mumbles, still dazed. She looks around for it and finds it a few feet away.

"Recruit Officer O'Hara, what was he doing to your partner?" She thinks back but can't remember anything specific. Looking up, she knows the Officer Moreno knows, too. "If I asked you to write a police report right now, how detailed would it be?"

Dennett doesn't do any better with the questions. They both have to do fifty push-ups.

* * *

They tell her she needs to learn how to shout. She wants to shout at them that she knows how, but she doesn't.

She's never exactly been soft-spoken, but apparently her voice isn't one of a police officer. It's too gentle, too pleasant, too young. She bristles. She can't help that her voice sounds that way.

Kate tries to coach her. She makes her poke around on her torso until she finds the tough band of muscle just underneath her ribs. Breath into the diaphragm, she tells her. She tries, and immediately coughs. It's weird.

Reed tells her it's all about the chest voice. She goes off on a rant about resonators in the body (whatever the hell that meant), and to get the most authoritative sound you had to use the resonators in the chest cavity. She makes her stand in the middle of their room with a hand on her sternum, making prolonged vowel sounds. She feels foolish, but when she finds her chest voice she thinks maybe it was worth her dignity. She asks how Reed knows all of this. Reed says she used to take voice lessons. It's the weirdest explanation she's heard.

Juliet practices breathing into her diaphragm and using her chest voice in private. She still feels foolish.

But the next time they're told to shout orders at a training officer her voice fills the room, echoes bouncing off the walls, and startles everyone. Even Officer Moreno's eyebrows all but disappear into his hairline. No one mocks her voice again after that.

* * *

Their legal training brings them back into the classroom more, and she's relieved. This is the stuff she excels at, she knows. This is familiar. They learn about protocols and justification. They learn about probable cause. They learn about the deadly force policy. She memorizes it all with ease.

And then it combines with their tactical training. They run video simulations and put the policies into action. She's glad none of the other recruits are in the room when they do them. She's told to act as if the simulations are real. They hand her a prop gun.

The first few video simulation is straightforward enough. The narration before the video informs her that she is about to confront a suspect for a possible kidnapping. She shouts at the simulation, identifying herself as a police officer and telling it to put his hands up, feeling silly for talking to a screen.

The video doesn't comply, shouting back that he didn't care who she was. The simulation man begins walking down the hall toward the camera. She catalogues the knife in his hand, and her own goes to the prop gun. But she can still see his other hand, so she doesn't draw her weapon. She shouts again. The man suddenly yells and rushes forward. On instinct she whips the gun out of its holster and fires at the screen. The gun clicks uselessly, and then the screen goes black.

"Holy shit," slips out of her mouth, and the woman running the simulation gives her a small smile.

"Yeah, they're pretty realistic sometimes," she says. She has to nod in agreement. Though on some base level she knew it was just a simulation, her body still reacted as if it were real. She takes a few deep breaths before the next simulation.

"Can you explain your choices?" the woman asks. She looks up, trying to hide her confusion. "When did you draw your weapon?"

"As he was running at us," she says.

"Do you feel you could have drawn your weapon sooner?"

She thinks for a moment. "Yes," she says. "Probably when I saw that he had a knife in his hand."

The woman nods and writes something down. She starts up the next simulation. Juliet is on edge still from the last one, but somehow manages to focus for the next two simulations. She's able to explain all of her choices, even if she realizes afterward that it might not have been the right one.

"You're doing well," the instructor tells her after the last one. "There's really no right or wrong answers to these. We just need you to be able to explain and defend your actions. And we need to test your understanding of the deadly force policy. The last thing we want is to send an officer who is not confident about that policy out into the field."

She nods. "I understand."

"Good," the instructor says. "A good understanding of these policies is essential. If you make the wrong choice, you could be shot or killed, or you could get someone else shot or killed. You need to be able to make choices in a split second."

She nods again.

* * *

Hell Week arrives four months into their training. It's something all recruit classes have to do. They're also told it's the reason a lot of recruits drop out.

While they're normally allowed to sleep until 6 am, during Hell Week they're woken up at 3 am. Every morning. Officer Moreno yells at them incessantly.

They run drills and obstacle courses until the sun is high overhead. She jumps over fences and scales walls and runs up and down stairs. They strap on weighted vests that add 30 pounds simulating the gear they will carry, and they do the obstacle course again. They drag 150-pound dummies across sand pits. She learns to kick in a door. She shoots a taser and learns how to use a baton, should the need arise. They do more push-ups that week than they had in their whole training previously.

Their meal times only last ten minutes and mostly consist of them cramming a few granola bars in their mouths and washing them down with a bottle of water before snapping back into action. More than once, she throws up while running immediately after eating. She's not the only one. Each time, they're yelled at until they start moving again.

They are introduced to the stress obstacle range. It's simple, in theory, designed to get your stress up and heart pumping and then test your weapons accuracy. They do the course one at a time while the rest of them run laps. By the time they call her name she's exhausted and her brain feels fuzzy, but she does it anyway. She walks away with one of the best times in her class.

Some recruits quit. Their number dwindles to sixteen.

Halfway through Hell Week they do action and reaction drills. She thinks the name doesn't do it justice. They strap her into protective gear and stand her ten feet away from a training officer. Both of them are armed with fake guns and rubber bullets.

"You're going to be up on your gun, shouting orders at him," Moreno tells her. "He will have his gun down by his side. I will be behind you. When I give him a thumbs up, he is going to initiate the gun fight. Your job is to engage him with one round as fast as you possibly can."

She stares down at the training officer as they strap a protective vest on him, too. She wonders why, if the bullets are only rubber.

"Does it hurt to get hit?" the question slips out before she can stop it. She blames it on sleep deprivation.

"Do you want me to be honest?" Moreno asks, turning back to her. She blinks at him.

"Yes?"

Moreno sighs and puts his hands on his hips. "Yeah, it hurts. Stand and fight."

He steps behind a protective cover, and she turns back to the training officer. She raises the gun, adjusting her grip on it, and points it at the training officer. She makes sure her finger is off the trigger. She begins shouting at him. He stares back. It unnerves her.

There is a real live person in front of her. A human being. She has a gun pointed at another human. He was going to shoot at her. She had to decide when to pull the trigger. On another person. A real person. In front of her. With a gun. A fake gun, granted, but a gun nonetheless.

She doesn't catch his first movement, and then her thigh erupts in pain. She manages to get one shot off as she clutches it. She misses. The training officer doesn't flinch. The rubber bullet that hit her rolls by her foot, and she kicks it away in in frustration. She knows it will leave a deep bruise where it hit her.

"Again!" she snarls, standing up straight and whipping her gun into position. The training officer stares at her again. She grits her teeth and then begins barking commands at him. He only stares back at her, still. She finds that not looking him in the eye helps.

This time she sees his gun come up. She immediately fires, but the shot misses again. His shot nails her in the shoulder, and she drops the gun as pain radiates from the spot.

"Again!" She bends to pick up the gun, but a hand beats her to it. Moreno straightens and looms over her, and she snaps back to attention.

"You need to calm down and refocus, Recruit Officer O'Hara," he says. She takes a deep breath in and fights off the rage she feels boiling just beneath the surface. "You don't need to move so much."

"Show me," she says, surprised by her own boldness. She blames it again on sleep deprivation.

Moreno narrows his eyes at her, but steps sideways so they're shoulder to shoulder. He raises the gun and points it at the wall. "The secret is don't move," he says. "Just go to the trigger." She watches as he plants himself and focuses on his target. The only motion is his finger moving to the trigger. He hands the gun back to her.

She squares herself off to the training officer and raises the gun. She begins shouting orders again, never taking her eyes off of him. She shouts for longer than she had either of the other times. And then his arm twitches up. He manages to get a shot off first, her protective vest taking the brunt of it, but she manages to shoot him too.

* * *

The last day of Hell Week is inarguably the worst. There are only two things planned for the day, and they are the things she is looking forward to the least. She and her fellow recruits line up and wait for their name to be called.

The taser is first. It's part of learning their training. Every recruit has to do it. It's so they know what it's like. Thankfully they don't actually fire the probes at them. And they only have to endure it for five seconds.

They call Kate first. She watches her friend step forward. Two training officers flank her, each taking one of her arms. Moreno steps up behind her and attaches the alligator clips. She sees Kate roll her neck first and then her shoulders, and then she nods.

"Taser, taser, taser," Moreno says. The crackle of electricity fills the air, along with Kate's screams. Juliet flinches, brings her hands up to her ears, and is thankful she can't see her friend's face. The two training officers lower Kate to the ground as she collapses. Someone squeezes her shoulder. She doesn't know who, nor does she care. It's over quickly, but Kate's screams echo in her ears.

One by one they're called up. Most scream like Kate had. Everyone has to be lowered to the ground.

When it's her turn, they've already tasered three quarters of her class. She is terrified, and the walk up to the training officers feels like it takes forever. They take her arms, and they're surprisingly gentle. She takes a few deep breaths as she feels the alligator clips being attached. As soon as she feels Moreno step away, she nods, anxious to get it over with. It's just five seconds.

"Taser, taser, taser," she hears.

The current surges through her, instantly locking her muscles. Her teeth clench and she can't open her mouth to scream even if she wanted to. There's pain, of course, only made worse by the adrenaline, but she is powerless to do anything about it. Her spine arches, forcing her to lean backwards, and the training officers support her. She can see their mouths moving but can't make sense of what they're saying. The crackling electricity is all she can hear in her ears, in her blood, in her bones.

And then it's over, and her knees give out. She's lowered to the ground gently, and they unclip the wires as she tries to catch her breath. Then they haul her to her feet, and she rejoins the rest of the recruits who have already been tasered.

A few minutes later, they're brought outside for the second part of the day. She's still shaken from the taser experience, but she forces herself to focus on what comes next. Which is even worse. They have to be pepper sprayed, and then continue to fight someone. It's so they're prepared, if they're ever pepper sprayed by accident by another officer, or on purpose by a suspect.

She's up first, apparently. She's ordered to run a short distance away and then turn and come back. By the time she arrives back in front of Moreno, her heart is pounding and her muscles are tensed. As instructed, she covers one eye and braces herself.

The pepper spray hits her face. She didn't cover her one eye well enough. Her eyes, nose, mouth, and throat burn, and she begins to cough. The deeps breaths she takes only make it worse, though, and she feels as if she's going to hack up a lung. Her skin feels like it's about to burn off and she swipes at her face. It only spreads the burning sensation.

A training officer nudges her with a boxing bag, and she strikes at it, completely blinded. She is reduced to base survival skills once more and is thankful she has her training to fall back on. She kicks and punches, landing hit after hit on the bag. She's not entirely sure what is happening around her. She only focuses only on the bag she is hitting, trying to follow it through her sense of touch. At one point the bag slams into her shoulder, but she drives her feet into the ground and shoves back.

"Time!" she hears Moreno call, and someone grabs her wrist. Terror overtakes her. She immediately struggles against it until she hears one of the training officers yelling at her not to resist. She gasps and gags and coughs as they lead her away, desperate for a breath that doesn't burn. They force her to bend over and then water splashes on her face.

"Open your eyes," she hears, and she tries. The burning intensifies and she pulls away, sputtering and shaking water off her face. Behind her she can hear someone else being pepper sprayed and then the sounds of their fists on the boxing bag.

"Recruit Officer O'Hara, we are trying to help you!" She allows herself to be led back. Someone helps her hold her eyes open and they continue to flush her eyes with water. The burning subsides only a little, but enough that she can open her eyes fully, accept a towel, and sit to the side as the next recruit finishes his fight and is led over.

* * *

The final two months begin to blur together. She finds her stride and doesn't deviate from it. She becomes stronger in every sense of the word, and suddenly finds herself at the top of her class again. Though she is still the smallest and the youngest, she learns to use both to her advantage.

Her hands stop shaking when something new is presented to her. She stops hesitating when she is asked to fire a gun, even up close. She is able to disassemble and reassemble her gun all in under 30 seconds. She recites the Miranda rights until she could say it backwards in her sleep. She takes the lead in drills and doesn't relent. Her sparring improves so much that she stops sneaking to the gym at night. She is able to pin a suspect within seconds and overpower people twice her size. She makes split-second decisions and defends them.

With only a few weeks left of training, they begin going on ride-alongs. She is paired with a grizzled old officer who prefers to ride in silence. It doesn't bother her. She performs everything that is asked of her and is rewarded with a thumbs up at the end of the day.

She is able to hide her terror. It never goes away. Maybe it never will. But it doesn't show on her face anymore. No one suspects that it still plagues her at night.

* * *

Two weeks out from graduation, she stares at herself in the mirror. A hardened young woman stares back at her. Her mouth is pressed into a harsh, flat line. Her body is stiff and muscular. Her eyes bore into hers, unyielding. There is not a single hair out of place. There is no softness to her.

She wonders when she became the person staring back at her. She hardly recognizes herself.

* * *

"Recruit Officer O'Hara!" She abandons her coffee and snaps to attention as Moreno approaches.

"Yes, sir!" she says crisply. He sits down at the table.

"At ease," he tells her, and she sits as well.

"What can I help you with, sir?" she asks, wrapping her hands around her coffee. She hopes he doesn't say to give it to him. She clutches the mug like a lifeline.

"I thought you'd be packing your things with the other recruits," he says. He intertwines his fingers and lays his hands on the table in front of him. "I wanted to check in with you before tomorrow."

"I can pack later," she says, taking a sip of her coffee. "What did you need?"

"Are you nervous?"

"No, sir." Her answer is immediate and firm. Moreno lowers his chin and stares at her.

"Are you being honest?" She finds she can't maintain eye contact. Her face relaxes from the mask she's gotten used to keeping it in.

"No, sir," she admits. "If I'm being honest, I'm not sure if I should be here." Moreno nods and, to her surprise, smiles.

"That's what I thought," he says lowly. "There's always one." She bristles and barely keeps herself in her seat. What exactly was he accusing her of? Her hands tighten around the mug.

"One what?" she asks, somehow managing to keep her voice level.

"Be careful with that mug," Moreno warns. "I don't think you want to be cleaning ceramic shards out of your hands."

"One _what_?" she repeats, working on relaxing her hands.

"There's always one recruit who can't make themselves into a machine," he says. "Sometimes there's more than one. But every class has at least one. And you're it."

"Excuse me?" She's offended. She is an excellent recruit. She is second only to Martinez, and even then it's by such a small margin that it barely counts. She has felt more like a machine than a person for months, now.

"Don't get all riled up, now," Moreno says. "It's not a weakness. Quite the opposite actually."

She scratches a fingernail along the rim of the mug. She thinks of her fellow recruits. None of them are machines, she thinks. They are all people she's laughed with, grown with, people she would trust with her life.

"I don't understand," she admits.

"What's your endgame here?" he asks suddenly. "What's the job you want most of all?"

She thinks. Shrugs. She hasn't thought about that, yet.

"I've been watching you carefully, O'Hara," he continues when she doesn't speak. "Highly intelligent, tough, resilient, personable, adaptable."

"Thank you, sir," she says quietly. His compliments are freaking her out, putting her more on edge.

"You have all the makings of a great detective."

She startles. Her head snaps up and she stares hard at Moreno. He smiles back. She frowns.

"What?" tumbles from her mouth.

"I mean it. One day you could even be chief." She lets that settle in. Her? A Chief of Police? Admittedly, she does like the sound of it. But all of her doubts come creeping up on her again. She thinks back to her struggle in the early months. She thinks of being called soft and undisciplined. She thinks of all the times she considered quitting. The shame burns at her.

"I don't know," she says slowly. "You might be wrong."

"I have been doing this for nearly twenty years," he informs her, sitting up straighter. "At this point in my career, I think I know what I'm talking about. And I've never been wrong yet. You don't have to be loud and aggressive and a bully to be a good cop. Having compassion and humanity is not a weakness." She shakes her head, but she doesn't know what she's disagreeing with.

"Just think about it." Moreno stands. Her eyes follow him as he takes a few steps away.

"Sir?" she says, and he turns back to her. "What should I do?"

"That's your decision," Moreno says. "If you really think you don't belong here, you don't have to accept the badge tomorrow." He pauses, and she lowers her gaze.

"But it sure would be a damn shame to lose a cop as good as you."

* * *

They are given their official dress uniforms and take official portraits. They are not allowed to smile. She gets to see hers briefly. She looks too serious, but then again, they all do. It still fills her with a pride she didn't expect.

Her whole family is there to watch her graduate, even Ewan. He sticks out like a sore thumb in the back of the room, towering above the rest of her family. They smile at her and wave as she and the rest of the recruits file onto the stage. She's not allowed to wave back, but she knows they know she would if she could.

Everything is moving too fast and too slow at the same time. It's hard to believe it's been half a year. Is she truly ready? All of her training officers seem to think so.

The recruits all stand at attention, and they begin calling names. One by one they file down, accept their badge, take a photo with Moreno, the Chief of Police, and the Commissioner.

She thinks back to that last night at home, before she left for the Police Academy. She feels eons older than the girl who had laid awake in excitement. She hadn't had any doubts, then. She had been sure and confident, and ready to take on the world. That determination is still there, at least. But her time at the academy has humbled her.

Martinez is called up. He files down the stairs of the stage, and she takes another step toward the stairs. She's next. Her heart is pounding again. Her palms begin to sweat and she tries to covertly dry them off on her uniform.

She sees a flash, hears the click of a camera's shutter, and then applause. She lets out a breath and squares her shoulders.

"Juliet O'Hara."

She can hear her family cheering as she descends the steps and walks toward Moreno. He's smiling at her, and the Chief and the Commissioner are both applauding as well. She shakes hands with all three of them as they congratulate her. They all stand a head and shoulders above her, and she suddenly feels very small. She briefly entertains the idea of standing on her toes for the photo.

Moreno holds a badge out to her. She studies it for a second. Badge number 36296. Her badge. It belongs to her.

For a second she thinks she might not take it.

But she reaches her hand out anyway and holds the bottom of it. Turns toward the audience. Finds her family. Smiles. The flash goes off, nearly blinding her, and she shakes hands with the three men again.

By the time she finds her seat on the stage again, she has shed the word "recruit" from her title. She is the real deal. She has accomplished her dream, what she set out to do. It comes with a weight she wasn't totally expecting. But she knows she is strong enough to bear it.


End file.
